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Use of Original Promised, Current Promised, and Actual Receipt Date

A lot of firms want to write vendor performance reports based on their ability to deliver against a PO and promises. Here is what needs to be done.

In each of the Line Items of the PO you will find an Original Promise Date, a Current Promise Date, and a Receipt Date. Of course, the Receipt date is hardly useful for historical analysis since you could have several receipts from a PO.

Here is what I tell customers to do:

1. When the vendor first confirms a delivery date, the Original Promise Date and the Current Promise Date is updated. Currently you have to do that manually but in Version 2010 this will be much easier.

2. When the vendor alters the delivery date, edit the Current Promise Date field ONLY for each line. Now the lines have an original and a current promise date.

3. After the items are received, match the various receipt lines against the PO lines. You now have a list of quantity of item received on specific Receipt Date against a PO Original Promise Date and Current Promise Date. (You also have a requested date in the PO Line data, the date YOU wanted the items)

The only thing that is not covered is multiple Current Promise Date Changes by the vendor. If the vendor provides more than one change to the Original Promise Date, you need to decide whether you want to retain the one most recent update or the first changed data only.

In most firms, the vendor performance is calculated as the actual receipt date against the Request Date and/or the actual receipt date against the Original Promise Date. Changes to the promise date recorded in the Current Promise Date field are not actually points to measure performance as they allow the vendor to be late. The Current Promise Date is most often used to warn the receiving dock about product that should be arriving.